Vacant Possession is a story of two families—one white, one Indigenous—both living in the shadow of the past. A past fragmented by events too long unresolved. Weaving dream, memory and fantasy, past and present, Vacant Possession is a story of conflict and the complexities of reconciliation.
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The abandoned house occupied by the heroine of Vacant Possession has a surrealist aura of the uncanny – and it is also haunted like the houses of horror cinema, with buried, repressed memories taking shape and walking around. Director-writer Margot Nash dramatises the issue of Aboriginal ownership of the Australian nation – in light of the groundbreaking Mabo legislation of 1992 which established crucial land rights claims for indigenous people. The vacant possession of the title (it is a real estate term) refers to white Australians' uneasy, even illegitimate, claim on their “homeland,” and the spiritual emptiness and emotional dysfunction which result.
Many Australian films – some made by visitors like Werner Herzog or Wim Wenders – have rehearsed a sermon about the barrenness of white settler culture in contrast with the richness of ancient, indigenous traditions. Vacant Possession, however, is an exciting, lyrical, complex piece of cinema, drawing on the strong history of women's independent filmmaking since the '70s, of which Nash herself has been such a key part. She seeks a deeply resonant poetic politics – part Walter Benjamin, part Christa Wolf – that hopes to draw personal illumination and social reconciliation from the tiniest epiphanies of everyday life. (Adrian MARTIN | Film Critic)
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As If Productions | asif@netspace.net.au
Margot NASH
